第54章

`Didn't you tell me this morning,' he said, `that one of the tradespeople declared he had met Rosanna yesterday, on the footway to Frizinghall, when we supposed her to be ill in her room?'

`Yes, sir.'

`If my aunt's maid and the other woman have spoken the truth, you may depend upon it the tradesman did meet her.The girl's attack of illness was a blind to deceive us.She had some guilty reason for going to the town secretly.The paint-stained dress is a dress of hers; and the fire heard crackling in her room at four in the morning was a fire lit to destroy it.Rosanna Spearman has stolen the Diamond.I'll go in directly, and tell my aunt the turn things have taken.'

`Not just yet, if you please, sir,' said a melancholy voice behind us.

We both turned about, and found ourselves face to face with Sergeant Cuff.

`Why not just yet?' asked Mr.Franklin.

`Because, sir, if you tell her ladyship, her ladyship will tell Miss Verinder.'

`Suppose she does.What then?' Mr.Franklin said those words with a sudden heat and vehemence, as if the Sergeant had mortally offended him.

`Do you think it's wise, sir,' said Sergeant Cuff, quietly, `to put such a question as that to me--at such a time as this?'

There was a moment's silence between them: Mr.Franklin walked close up to the Sergeant.The two looked each other straight in the face.Mr.

Franklin spoke first, dropping his voice as suddenly as he had raised it.

`I suppose you know, Mr.Cuff,' he said, `that you are treading on delicate ground?'

`It isn't the first time, by a good many hundreds, that I find myself treading on delicate ground,' answered the other, as immovable as ever.

`I am to understand that you forbid me to tell my aunt what has happened?'

`You are to understand, if you please, sir, that I throw up the case, if you tell Lady Verinder, or tell anybody, what has happened, until Igive you leave.'

That settled it.Mr.Franklin had no choice but to submit.He turned away in anger--and left us.

I had stood there listening to them, all in a tremble; not knowing whom to suspect, or what to think next.In the midst of my confusion, two things, however, were plain to me.First, that my young lady was, in some unaccountable manner, at the bottom of the sharp speeches that had passed between them.

Second, that they thoroughly understood each other, without having previously exchanged a word of explanation on either side.

`Mr.Betteredge,' says the Sergeant, `you have done a very foolish thing in my absence.You have done a little detective business on your own account.

For the future, perhaps you will be so obliging as to do your detective business along with me.'

He took me by the arm, and walked me away with him along the road by which he had come.I dare say I had deserved his reproof--but I was not going to help him to set traps for Rosanna Spearman, for all that.Thief or no thief, legal or not legal, I don't care--I pitied her.

`What do you want of me?' I asked, shaking him off, and stopping short.

`Only a little information about the country round here,' said the Sergeant.

I couldn't well object to improve Sergeant Cuff in his geography.

`Is there any path, in that direction, leading to the sea-beach from this house?' asked the Sergeant.He pointed, as he spoke, to the fir-plantation which led to the Shivering Sand.

`Yes,' I said, `there is a path.'

`Show it to me.'

Side by side, in the grey of the summer evening, Sergeant Cuff and Iset forth for the Shivering Sand.